Time: 9 December 2022  (Friday)  1：30-3：30pm  (Beijing Time)

Venue: Tencent Conference

Meeting ID: 342816581

Language:  Chinese

Topic: Consensus and Conformity: How China Contains COVID-19

Abstract: 

As the first epicentre of COVID-19, China emerged out of the situation stronger. When the pandemic ran amok in most parts of the world, the infection rate inside China has steadily declined reaching towards zero. Against this backdrop, this study asks three research questions. First, why was China able to contain pandemic? Some intuitive answers originate from analyses on cultural and ideological differences and regime types. For example, in addition to tracing and testing, China was more effective in implementing massive lockdowns and restricting people’s movement. If a strict top-down approach was to shape societal conformity, we should expect societal pushback. But pushback was sporadic without the support of the masses. This situation leads to our second research question, why didn’t the Chinese society break or engage in forms of resistance? In fact, we observe a strong societal consensus on pandemic control actively courting and encouraging strong governmental intervention. Therefore, we argue that it is precisely this societal-state interaction that allowed for the emergence of a certain type of effective pandemic control. This leads to our third question, how the Chinese state—decisionmakers and bureaucrats—and society were able to meet in the middle. We propose a new theoretical framework on crisis management and governance that transcends traditional ones based on ideological, regime and cultural divides. For us, state-societal interaction involves three parties—decision-makers or political leaders, implementers or bureaucrats and citizens and social organizations. In an ideal situation in which crisis management is effective, there must be a consensus on all parties to pursue certain types of solutions, and in the process, political leaders conform bureaucrats and the society towards a desired course of action. Lacking consensus or conformity may lead to inaction or fragmentation.